Such has been the excitement surrounding the introduction of The Hundred that Brockley captain, Boreham, a man that was avant-garde well before his time, was bound to be at the forefront of cricketing innovation.

So it was no surprise that, on a perfect day and on a perfect wicket that the match was reduced to 40 overs per side.

It was more of a surprise that Brockley ended up batting and the shock clearly put Wivenhoe on the back foot and 100,000 volts through the Brockley line up.
S Fisher again led the way with a faultless innings of supreme wristiness that sailed into three figures with a flick over mid wicket that alerted Air Traffic Control at Stansted airport. Or was it Southend? East and west are such difficult directions to ascertain without sunshine and an old fashioned watch, especially once you get off the A12

Either way, Huffer knew which was the boundary was and directed the ball there with cheery regularity until events took place and he returned with 74 to his name which meant that Brockley closed with a seemingly unassailable 231 for not many.

Meanwhile, after what will hopefully be one of the last tea breaks missing that vital ingredient, Boreham realised that for just once his avant had not been garde enough or perhaps the Wivenhoe captain had misunderstood the transformative plan that Dan had hatched : Wivenhoe seemed to think they TOO had 40 overs to bat when in reality the new format was literally a 40 match in which Brockley had won 231 – nil

if the misunderstanding wasn’t bad enough, the ensuing consternation saw Wivenhoe batter the ball to all four points of the mystery compass, reaching the required total with too much time spare.

Luckily the ball wasn’t battered half as well as the award winning fish and chips that followed a most agreeable beer with the hosts.

Wivenhoe may have walked off with the points but Brockley departed with the the blueprint for the future of the game : a first innings of 40 overs of batting on a road followed by a glorious tea (exact format still to be defined) during the lucrative commercial break and a second innings of beer with the hosts and post match analysis with the experts on the grass outside Henley’s.

if that wasn’t enough good news for the visitors, there were 42 potential new youngsters discovered for the club and those were just the ones in clear view behind the Henley’s counter.

Every cloud……..